About Mae

Mae Lu is a Canada-born, So-Cal-raised Asian American 30 Something, living a dream with her hubby & dog in the magical kingdom of Hawaii.

This red-lipstick aficionado designs websites for a living and runs a fledgling lifestyle YouTube Channel in her spare time. On the weekends, if she's not filming, you can find her behind the lens of her Sony A6000, shooting scenery in Hawaii, hiking the hills and ridges of her beloved island home, or chasing the perfect sunset.

Why "thereafterish."? Because "and they lived happily ever thereafter" is just half of every story, and this is mine.

About

Blogger | Web Designer | Photo Hobbyist | Content Creator

Musing & A Bio

As a female it’s hard for me to speak of my own sex without having an unmasked nonsexual preference for it. At times, I can be guilty of esteeming its superiority beyond the Other Sex. And why not? I am a woman? Or at least on the road to growing into one?

There is an undeniable magic in these creatures, women. Not having totally traversed into womanhood, I don’t know when this transformation actually takes place, but I have yet to feel it? I have had the fortune to observe them and witness the specialness that makes them altogether unique and beautiful. There is strangeness in their special qualities, too, for they are creations of irony, paradox, riddles and beauty. Same in their uniqueness, different in their personalities, women share the complexities and simplicities that are commonly bound to all, and yet it is these complexities and how they are formed and applied to each personality that sets them apart from others.

What a sense of humor God had when it created women! In men, it created solid forms, things concrete and hard, on the surface at least. In women, it created liquid, things soft, pliable yet strong, with intricacies and delicacies that would shine when rotated in the light, reflecting the glory of the Maker. I would like to think that women were the reason for smiles, laughter, and merriment. Perhaps the first woman was the first to break her lips apart and let the corners curve upward in a beguiling, ecstatic, arc. This is my bias speaking, of course.

But I digress.

The entirety of woman is a paradox. Complexly simple at times and at times infuriatingly simply complex. Different from each other, but very alike at the same time–same in their difference. Strong, yet weak. Hard, yet soft.

She may be simple in her likes and tastes, because she knows what she wants. Simple pleasures thrill her. But by the same turn, she enjoys things complicated, things that bring a challenge, things that test her, that may even bring her pain. She is the same as the next woman and yet almost entirely different. She experiences the same feelings, the same burning desires, simple passions, simple wants, the same frets, the same worries, the same doubt, yet how she acts on them, yet her reasons for them may be totally different. These simple passions and wants may be like a whelming flood, overtake her and drown her in the current. She may be ruled by her emotions, consumed like a fire, in a split second. In the next second, she has returned to composure.

She is stronger than people credit. She must experience the physical pain of pushing a sack of bone, skin, muscle, fat, organs, through a 4-inch slit between her legs, and then she must bear the emotional burden of knowing a part of her has become its own entity, see the thing make decisions that break her heart, and then ultimately leave her, sometimes never to return, never reciprocate her undying, totally consuming love. She is weakened sometimes by her resolve to love this thing and allow it room to grow apart from her. It is this love that allows her to be weak, to give when her instincts cry out to be resolute. She must at times be harder than stone, even when she wants to slacken and allow things to take their course. And many times, she must be the soft place that men and children need, even when she has no energy and inside may be hard like the bottom of an empty barrel.

These riddles of the make up of women make them magical creatures. Creatures of laughter, tears, screams and song. Living paradoxes.

Their enchanting mystery has bewitched men, writers, artists, sculptors, poets, bards and even their own kind for centuries. They bewitch me still. These beings of charm, of opposing personalities, powers that clash. These brilliant people of simple delights, complicated emotions, intricate facets that shine. How can you not love them?

I guess it is the Simplicity in me that yearns to be included in their ranks. But I am just a mere girl, and I can live with that for now.

//

Is there anything else I have to say about myself?

Let me say it briefly, then.

Music rules me. I sing in the shower, the car, under my breath. I like to dance. I like the feel of a deep beat driving my feet to move, to pound my heels into the ground of a dimly lit club. Maybe I shimmy when I walk.

I like luxury, soft fabrics, pearls, the glint of something metallic at my neck, but I am not willing to pay for them, because the price they require does not equal the feeling counterfeits may many times nicely provide. I am, after all, not a person of means.

I like art. I don’t know how to produce it, though my rudimentary canvases and papers might be called paintings and drawings by the untrained.

I like to feel arms around me, the feeling of skin on my skin, of lips against my cheek, of the warmth of a body next to me before I fall into dreams. I like my hair to be played with.

I have horrendously bad hobbies: I enjoy really bad pop music from Korea and Japan, though I can’t understand what they say. I download the videos relentlessly off the Internets. I would rather watch animé or movies when I should be doing homework, and shopping is both a bane and salvation from emotional doldrums.

I read when I want to escape. I blog when I have nothing to say. I like to write, but I am undisciplined and sometimes unmotivated.

I am a lost, hopeless student who will graduate one day and realize that she doesn’t know what she wants. I moved across the country to be with a man I met on the Internets and courted for only five months.

I love God, but am constantly perplexed by where it/she/he belongs in my life. Certain meanings in those particular things society doesn’t deem as polite conversation escape me. Even in religion. Politics I don’t get into. Death I understand is coming, but I question why it has to happen. Taxes I can’t prepare myself.

I am Pilipino, and, while I can sometimes appreciate my heritage, I find myself in turns running away from it and hiding myself in other cultures, and in turns swelling with cultural pride. Sometimes I wish I were Korean or Japanese. It is these women I find most beautiful in the world. I can understand Tagalog, but I can’t speak a lick of it, nor can I write it to save my life. English will suffice for now, as garbled as my words might be.

And at this particular moment? I am twenty-three, typing on my beloved Apple iBook, wondering about where I’ll be when I’m twenty-four.